With the ever expanding capabilities and applications for cellular phones and other mobile handsets, users are increasingly saving personal and business data on their mobile handsets. While maintaining such data on a mobile handset can make a user's life easier, mobile handsets are vulnerable to being lost or stolen which can result in loss of the data as well the potential disclosure to others. Consequently, there is a need to maintain backup files of data stored on mobile handsets. Many mobile handsets provide applications and mechanisms for backing of files to a personal computer. However, such utilities are only helpful if users routinely backup their data, and too often it is the loss of a mobile handset that reminds users of the need to perform regular backups. Moreover, backing up data stored on mobile handsets does nothing to protect the data from being misappropriated by someone who steals or finds the mobile handset.
Data in a mobile handset can be protected from unauthorized use by maintaining the data in encrypted format and only decrypting data as it is needed by the user or an application. However, decrypting data each time it is accessed can be time consuming and, to be practical, may require greater processing and memory capability than is generally available on mobile handsets. Consequently, data is rarely encrypted on mobile handsets.